


Cultivation

by Splinter



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Post-Movie(s), thoughts about children and infertility
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-01
Updated: 2016-06-01
Packaged: 2018-07-11 15:20:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7057891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Splinter/pseuds/Splinter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She’s declared her own limits, backed off to focus on the things she’s good at. Sometimes she feels an ache of dissatisfaction with herself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cultivation

It’s late afternoon when Furiosa heads for the green room, earlier than she normally breaks for the evening meal. She’d had a good, busy day in the garage, until Toast and Capable reeled her in to help with a dispute between former war boys. That’s rare, these days, and rarer that the women want any kind of backup. A lot of resentments have faded in the face of improved conditions, but these men were senior enough to have something to lose from the end of Joe’s reign. The memory of an imperator’s grease still weighs with them. It weighs on Furiosa, too. Falling back into that body language is hard, and much too easy.

The green room – formerly the Vault – is a reassuring reminder of change. They’d tried calling it the Solarium, but then the Dag took over the sunny end with endless seedlings, and the nickname stuck. Angharad’s slogans are still on the wall, but there’s green, and a work table, and lots of cushions and blankets. The metal door is long gone.

She finds the Dag in possession, repotting seedlings with Max. Furiosa says hello but leaves them to it, going to get some of the tea the Dag has brewed. Max is a natural with smaller plants like this, skilled in handling them and good at spotting when they need attention. Since he moved into her room, desert flowers have a way of appearing. Seeds and growing plants found on scouting missions get handed to the greenthumbs, but a few now sit in small pots on her desk and windowsill. 

It’s not a talent that Furiosa shares. She has memories of the Green Place, but even there, she’d been more interested in engines. When the Vuvalini rack their memories for scraps of crop knowledge, she has little to contribute. She did help to piece together the memory of a pruning technique once. She’s in a mood to notice that she’s better at cutting than at growing. 

She’s declared her own limits, backed off to focus on the things she’s good at. No one can do everything, and it’s wasteful to spend her time poorly. She works on the irrigation systems, helps at the busiest harvest times, when muscle counts for as much as skill with plants. Sometimes she feels an ache of dissatisfaction with herself.

Furiosa pours herself some tea, and settles down among the cushions to watch the gardeners at work. The Dag’s other assistant is her 900-day-old daughter – Cheedo chose Angharad Serafina as a name, but for the moment she’s generally known as Shoot. She’s pottering about, cheerfully underfoot, wriggling her fingers into the heap of soil. She comes over to show Furiosa a broken-off root she’s found, held in plump little hands. Furiosa admires it – she’s genuinely charmed – but doesn’t quite know what to say afterwards. Shoot, used to Furiosa’s limitations, trots off to bother Max, who finds her a pot to plant the root in. 

He’s so good with children. He’s got used to Shoot, to the increased number of kids running around the Citadel. He always knows how to deal with them in the moment, though he’s sometimes shaky about it afterwards. The first day Shoot walked, taking three whole steps, their whole community had rejoiced. Later that night, Max had wept, curled himself around Furiosa and sobbed. She’d held him tight and had no idea what to do. 

She thinks he doesn’t want children, knows she can’t have any. She doesn’t believe she ever wanted them for herself. Being declared barren had been a relief at the time, under the circumstances. She might have felt differently if she’d grown up in the Green Place. Maybe. She knows Max was relieved when she told him, though on darker days she wonders.

Furiosa finishes her tea, putting her cup carefully on the low table as she watches him at work. He’s potting up the last of the seedlings in a cracked teacup, hands careful and sure as they pack in the soil. He gives the cup back to the Dag, who tells him – imperious as ever – that he won’t be needed further. She smiles, though; she’s fond of him, they’re all fond of him. He’s easy to be fond of.

Max washes his hands before coming over to Furiosa, though he misses the smudge of soil on his cheek. He sits next to her in her nest of cushions, rumbling a greeting and stroking a hand down her arm. He settles himself behind her and brings both hands to her shoulders, starting to work at the muscles of her back. It’s so matter-of-fact that the Dag doesn’t tell them to get a room – an old-world phrase of Mel’s, which the sisters now shout like a war cry at every possible opportunity. Furiosa dreads the day when Shoot learns to say it.

She doesn’t really need a massage. Work hasn’t been heavy, he kneads her back regularly so that knots don’t build up, and she’s just more relaxed these days. Today, her worst tension is in her own head. Max goes quickly over her neck and shoulders, down her bare, shortened arm, checking the spots that tighten up from the weight and pressure of her prosthetic. His hands are as certain as they were with the seedlings.

He shifts closer as he works, his body against hers. She expects him to stop soon, in the absence of real tension. He doesn’t. He’s not even kneading her now, his firm touch softening into stroking. His hands are warm, on her skin and through her soft tunic. She sighs into it, and he hums. She wonders if he’s noticed her fretted thoughts, if he’s trying to work on them the way he’d unknot a tight muscle.

She lets herself settle back against him. He’s stroking his hand up through her hair, broad strokes over her scalp, running his fingers through the short bristles. His other arm is around her waist; she finds his hand, laces their fingers together. He leans in and noses at the back of her neck, which is when she gives up all pretence that this is a massage, and melts into the pleasure of being petted and cuddled. 

“Shall I bring food up?” Dag’s putting her tools away at the other end of the room, catching Shoot before she trips over the rug. 

“Yes, please,” says Max, who still tends to go between just grunting and speaking with unexpected courtesy.

“In about half an hour. Going to find Cheedo first,” the Dag tells them. Max hums again.

Left alone in the green room, he draws Furiosa down among the cushions, pulling her in to spoon her. He strokes the outside of her arm, fingertips moving gently over the muscles of her shoulder, down to her elbow and her wrist. Then he does it again, with his whole hand, his palm open against her skin. When she murmurs, a pleased noise, he wraps his arm around her, holds her closer. 

He kisses the back of her neck, lips soft as he moves across the yoke of her shoulders, around the brand and up her neck. It’s all slow and easy; he’s not trying to turn her on. She’s not really sure what he’s doing. The way he kisses her is idle and unhurried. She’d say aimless if it weren’t making her feel so good, if he didn’t seem so pleased about it. One hand is back in her hair, his other arm draped around her waist, close but not tight.

She reaches for his hand again. She means it as a light touch, to let him know how much she likes this. She surprises herself with how tightly she grips him. She takes a deeper breath, to steady herself, but it comes out shaky.

Max squeezes her fingers. He shuffles up so that his knees are tight behind hers, their bodies close from head to toe. She takes another wobbly breath, bracing herself against tears. He’s unknotting her inner tension, but now that she’s untangled she feels raw. Her eyes are welling up, just from the reassurance of being touched. 

“Hey, hey,” he says, very soft. He rests his head against her shoulder, starts stroking her hair again. Furiosa leans back against him, lets go. Once she allows her tears to fall, there aren’t so many of them. She doesn’t cry for long, soothed by the heat of his body and the gentle, repetitive motion of his hand. 

She doesn’t know how long he holds her like this. He stirs when the Dag returns, with Cheedo and Shoot and platefuls of food. He nudges Furiosa to get up and eat. She runs her fingers up and down his forearm, where it’s still wrapped snugly around her. He licks his thumb to dab at her neck; she realises he must have left a smear of soil there, from the smudge on his face. 

“Don’t,” she says. “It’s fine.” It’s clean earth, not an imperator’s grease, and she likes thinking that it’s a mark from his touch. He smooths his hand over her neck, kisses her shoulder. She lies still, feeling him close for a moment longer, before they get up to go to the table.

**Author's Note:**

> [In the first movie](http://kissthemgoodbye.net/movie/displayimage.php?album=399&pid=890545#top_display_media), Max and Jessie live in a house full of plants, so I headcanon that he's good with them. 
> 
> Thank you to the lovely @ecouter-bien for answering questions about Australian English - all mistakes are my own.
> 
> I wrote a sequel to this: [Close](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7239520) starts right after Cultivation, though both are standalone fics. They also have different ratings/warnings. 
> 
> I'm at [lurkinghistoric](http://lurkinghistoric.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr.


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